Category Archives: Surrey and Sussex

It’s an unsatisfactory sort of place now, but once it must have been a pleasant hamlet beside the River Wey.

This oft-flooded piece of grazing land, named in the Domesday Book of 1086, now carries the name of Old Woking, dwarfed by the newer town to the north.

A Saxon monastery once stood here, but when the railway arrived in 1838, nine astonishing years after Stephenson’s Rocket had changed travel for ever, this was a blasted and empty heath. Woking Common was just a deserted staging post as the tracks grew to Southampton in the west and Portsmouth to the south. Continue reading →

Another week, and another long run, which this time I’ve scheduled from Crawley. Theoretically it’s possible to fit the miles around ring roads and residential streets, but although that type of running can make for an enjoyable sort of fartlek, I’ve a different kind of excursion in mind today.

The route I’ve planned crosses the suburban landscapes to Three Bridges, where I leave the sixties estates to pick up a cycle track along the Worth Way. Passing Worth church, in part built by the Saxons, my run heads across the M23 Brighton motorway and into the Sussex farmland beyond.

Just four miles into my outing, and I’m standing outside a smelly cowshed with green fields all around me, questioning my sanity. Twelve miles to go, and my legs should be feeling much better than this. But somehow they don’t, and I can see a struggle looming worryingly up ahead.

The track crosses the road to Turners Hill, scene of many an office outing to the Red Lion pub, to rejoin the course of the old railway, for the Worth Way follows the course of an old branch line. Continue reading →